Pioneer Power

Dorothea Lischick '77

Success in a male-dominated industry is often an uphill battle for a woman, but it’s a challenge that Dorothea E. Lischick ’77 welcomed with a determination that is uncommon. It propelled her to the top job at one of the largest sports and entertainment venues in Colorado, that of general manager of the complex that includes the Colorado Springs World Arena and Ice Hall, and the Pikes Peak Center for Performing Arts.

Lischick has breathed life into the complex with sporting events, concerts, family shows, graduations, and civic events, among other programs, with skills she began to develop as a student at William Paterson.

“I was a resident assistant while I was at William Paterson,” Lischick recalls. “I got involved with student activities, hanging up posters, selling tickets, working as an usher at Shea Center, and in the coffeehouse that was in the old Coach House. I did it because I lived on campus, and enjoyed meeting people.”

She worked for her four student years in what was then called Auxiliary Services, coordinating the rental of conference rooms and meetings on campus. Later, after she graduated, she returned to campus from 1982 to 1986 and worked as the director of conference services and special events.

Challenge is something she relishes. “I thrive on a hectic schedule,” Lischick says. “I like pressure, and the fact that no day is the same, because I have a lot of energy. In this business you are either all in it or all out of it.”

She comes by these traits naturally as one of family of nine children. (Lischick, who is a middle child, shares a William Paterson connection with her older sister Charlotte Ambrose, M.Ed. ’93, and their mother Christine Lischick, ’82).

Nationally, only 33 percent of all facility managers are women, placing her squarely among the few women who are successful in the industry. She supervises thirty-four full-time employees, and 250 part-timers who are part of her team in the buildings she conceived from “blueprints to reality.”

Lischick finds tremendous satisfaction in her work. “It’s very rewarding to stand in the wings and watch an artist I’ve booked perform on stage. In this way, I am creating fond memories for the audience.”